Heimbach rises through the ranks of the radical right

Moving on from his school days of calling Muslims “Saracen hordes” and LGBTQ people “sodomites,” Matthew Heimbach has quickly become a rising star in the white nationalist movement.

Heimbach is one to revel in the controversy he generates rather than shy away from it. As much as he may disdain “political correctness” or “smearing” from liberal news outlets, he’s more than willing to be the liberal media’s freak show if it means getting on Huffington Post Live. Good for him. However, he might want to cultivate his image more carefully (or don’t, fine by us): Label 56, the neo-Nazi punk label that promoted Definite Hate, the band of Wade Michael Page, perpetrator of the Sikh temple massacre, has taken a liking to Heimbach’s work.

Heimbach has been busy bringing white nationalist speakers to Towson University with his unofficial “White Student Union.” One of his most recent invitees was Merlin Miller, the leader of the American Third Position Party (A3P). A3P formed out of the Golden States Party, founded by a group of racist skinheads called Freedom 14 attempting to form a “mainstream” political party. Another White Student Union invitee was, of course, Jared Taylor, head of the white nationalist American Renaissance. Another appearance of Taylor’s at Texas A&M was coordinated by neo-Nazi Preston Wiginton.

Heimbach is also making the rounds to promote himself among the racist right. Aside from contributing podcasts to Counter-Currents, Heimbach has written in the Citizen Informer (the newspaper of the Council of Conservative Citizens), which has called African-Americans a “retrograde species of humanity.”

He certainly has the credentials, having long been a member of the League of the South and willing to wonder aloud about the benefits of physically separating racial groups. “You see demographically that when whites give up, if you want to call it power, if you want to call it influence, when you rely upon the false democratic system, what happens? Your nation turns into anarchy.” Heimbach said during a segment of his new Counter-Currents podcast, in reference to South Africa, suggesting that the country was better off under apartheid. Later, he says, “You need a certain number of whites even to maintain basic civilization.”

Heimbach isn’t going away any time soon, likely to the dismay of his former associates in the Youth for Western Civilization who are busy ascending the ranks of anti-immigrant groups or other far-right causes. They aren’t going so far as he in suggesting that apartheid is a good idea. Far right as they may be, they’ve made it closer to the Beltway than Heimbach has, and maybe he likes it that way.